Unitary Supermultiplets of OSp(8^*|4) and the AdS_7/CFT_6 Duality

Abstract

We study the unitary supermultiplets of the N=4 d=7 anti-de Sitter (AdS_7) superalgebra OSp(8^*|4), with the even subalgebra SO(6,2) X USp(4), which is the symmetry superalgebra of M-theory on AdS_7 X S^4. We give a complete classification of the positive energy doubleton and massless supermultiplets of OSp(8^*|4) . The ultra-short doubleton supermultiplets do not have a Poincaré limit in AdS_7 and correspond to superconformal field theories on the boundary of AdS_7 which can be identified with d=6 Minkowski space. We show that the six dimensional Poincare mass operator vanishes identically for the doubleton representations. By going from the compact U(4) basis of SO^*(8)=SO(6,2) to the noncompact basis SU^*(4)XD (d=6 Lorentz group times dilatations) one can associate the positive (conformal) energy representations of SO^*(8) with conformal fields transforming covariantly under the Lorentz group in d=6. The oscillator method used for the construction of the unitary supermultiplets of OSp(8^*|4) can be given a dynamical realization in terms of chiral super-twistor fields.